Welcome
Welcome to StephenBarkley.com. This is where I post all the stuff I've been thinking, praying, speaking, and writing about. Thanks for reading.
The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession (P.S.) © 2005 Harper Perennial 298 pages I’m afraid my journey with Coelho is over. I was intrigued by The Alchemist, even though it smacked of neo-gnosticism. Veronica Decides to Die had such a twisted premise, I could overlook the philosophy. The Devil and Miss Prym, again, was such [...]
The Age of Fable © 1855 The Heritage Press (with additions © 1942) 369 pages Bulfinch’s Age of Fable is a classic reference work that lives up to its reputation. The book is packed with anecdotes of deities, monsters, and heroes, some of whom I had never heard of before. Thanks to the “Index of [...]
The Crucible (Penguin Classics) © 1952 Penguin 152 pages There’s something refreshing about reading plays (something I don’t do nearly enough). It takes some serious literary wizardry to tell a compelling story within a mere few hours of dialogue. Dialogue is (obviously) the foundation of any play, and Miller’s is snappy and engaging. It doesn’t [...]
The Napoleon of Notting Hill © 1904 Wordsworth © 1996 129 pages Futurists fall into two categories: those who predict the collapse of civilization (Wells, Orwell, Atwood), and those who anticipate sunshine and lollipops (Kurzwiel, The Jetsons). Chesterton invented a new category. In 1904, he wrote a novel about a future eight decades later where [...]
Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim © 2009 Alfred A. Knopf 268 pages Angel Time is the story of an assassin who repents and teams up with an angel to do God’s work at various times in history. Rice envisions a number of books for this new character. Here a disclaimer before I continue: [...]
The Piano Man’s Daughter Special Edition © 1995 Harper Collins 499 pages I’ve read Findley before: Pilgrim: A Novel and The Wars. Although this title sounded a little too Hallmark-ish for my taste, I gave it a shot on the strength of his other books and my love for pianos. The novel felt painfully average. [...]
The Year of the Flood: A Novel © 2009 McClelland & Stewart 434 pages In Oryx and Crake, Atwood painted a future where advances in genetic engineering created a plague that eradicated most of humanity. I loved the novel for its realism—many of the engineered creatures Atwood envisioned had already been created. It was a [...]
Downtown Owl: A Novel© 2008 Scribner (2009) 275 pages I was flipping through Klosterman at Chapters when an employee came up behind me and started gushing about him. The bookseller compared Klosterman to Douglas Coupland—I was sold. Downtown Owl is a story about three people in a small town in 1983/84 North Dakota. Mitch is [...]
Father Elijah: An Apocalypse © 1996 Ingatius 597 pages Holy. O’Brien’s writing bleeds holiness. I took a chance with this book. I was browsing the religion section at “So Many Books…” in Huntsville when I saw the tell-tale band across a plain spine that marks Ignatius Press books. That along with the promise of an [...]
The Complete Stories © 1971 Farrar, Straus and Giroux 555 pages Brutal. I was racking my brain to come up with the perfect superlative to describe O’Connor’s short stories and nothing fits better. All of the recurring themes—racism, murder, loss, pain, religious fanaticism—are written with an edge that can make you physically wince while reading. [...]
by rss
by email